Fragments
by Amata le Fay
Summary: "Melanie Darrow was far from one unit; she was a million fragments. Chipped, snapped, broken pieces, glued back together so many times." Written for the Starvation Forum's August prompt, "broken."


**Author's Note: Attack of the Midnight Muse! Aren't I lucky? Here is the product of lying awake in bed, tossing and turning because I wanted to write a Foxface story for the Starvation Forum's prompt "Broken," but couldn't make it fit. It still seems a little strange, but oh well.**

"If you could sum yourself up in only one word, what would it be? There's your interview angle," her mentor had said.

_One word?_

Some tributes are able to actually be one clear, cohesive unit—one trait, one person. These are the people that can come up with one word and speak the truth.

But Melanie Darrow was far from one unit; she was a million fragments. Chipped, snapped, broken pieces, glued back together so many times.

_Determined._ Determined not to let these Games take her, determined to never go down without a fight. Determined to live her life her way, and not even the Hunger Games were going to take that. Determination had snapped off of her several times, times when she had given up. But this time she was going to keep it close.

_Clever._ She was quite clever, quite cunning. Clever enough to slip by without authority noticing her for years. Clever enough to live off everyone else without them ever realizing. Cleverness had only failed her once, but it wasn't what defined her.

_Swift._ All of her life had been swift, not just the way she moved... everything rushed by in a blur of _wake up, eat, steal, rest, eat, sleep._ She hadn't dared to sit back and ponder, lest she miss her opportunity. She moved quickly, thought quickly.

_Greedy. _There was always some flawed part of her that wanted something of her own, and had the nerve to take it from someone else. Food was necessary, but she took everything that she wanted. She was a thief, it's what they do. _Deal with it,_ she would always say when people questioned this part of her. This fragment had been firmly glued in by her father.

_Proud._ She was proud person, always above others, even when they knew she wasn't. She had a _brain_, they didn't. And for that she was grateful and boastful. She didn't mind this piece, it made her confidence grow...

_A Coward. _She tended to avoid confrontation, and so those one-dimensional idiots called her a coward. She had embraced the term—to her it meant she knew when to stand and when to fall back with as little damage as possible. She was a intellectual person, and knew that _they_ didn't particularly prize this skill. But then again, _they_ didn't particularly prize her kind of brain, either.

_A Loner._ She had always tried to work alone. She trusted no one, lest they break that trust and leave her broken again... She found herself much easier to work with. She knew her pieces of personality.

_A Fox._ This is what they saw when she showed her face, cocked her head, moved swiftly. This is all they saw when she showed her cleverness, her cockiness. Many didn't bother to learn her name, instead calling her _The Fox, Fox-Girl, Foxy, Foxface._ They saw an animal, they approached an animal. This was the kind of image they wanted, but it didn't come close to capturing _her._ It didn't consider the other part, the part she knows that she can't forget. The part that, when remembered, makes the almost-unit fall into the broken fragments that they are.

_A Girl Who Has Looked Fear in the Eye and Tried Very Hard Not to Cry._ And isn't that what everyone like her had been at one point?

But that was more than one word.

And this is what she wants to tell them, that she is a _person_, and people like her are broken, fragmented, a mixture of glued-together pieces. That those simple Capitol _airheads_ cannot begin to imagine the complexities of her mind.

So she gives them "sly," and they seem perfectly content with that.

And for once, she appreciates her fragments, because that's the thing that makes her so much better than _them_.

**So there it is! Everyone knows fanfiction writers live for the reviews.**


End file.
